Last night I wrote about a Morning Consult poll which showed that only 2% of Americans were QAnon true believers, with another 4% saying they thought QAnon's theories were "somewhat accurate." This prompted two questions on my Twitter feed:
- What the hell does "somewhat accurate" mean?
- Isn't 6% a lot of people?
On the first question, I beg ignorance. That was the wording of the poll, and that's how some people responded. Presumably it means they think there might be something to this whole QAnon thing but they aren't sure.
The second question is easier: 6% of all US adults is about 15 million people. Because of this, many tweeters thought I had made a mistake by headlining my post, "Barely Anyone Believes In QAnon’s Conspiracy Theories." Is 15 million people really "barely anyone"?
This is an excellent question, and the answer depends a lot on context. For example, if 15 million people go to bed hungry every night, that's a lot of people. We should see that they have more food to eat. But the reason it's a lot is that it's a standalone number that's not relative to anything else. It's just 15 million hungry people, and that's a lot regardless of whether everyone else is doing OK.
Conversely, when you talk about public opinion the only thing that matters is how one group compares to another. Is 74 million people a lot? Not if it's relative to 81 million people in a presidential election. Likewise, 15 million people is a lot only if it represents a widespread belief that can move the public. But if it represents only 6% of the country, with the other 94% believing that it's nonsense, then it's not a lot of people.
Now, is 15 million enough that it could represent real trouble? Sure. Pizzagate was also a tiny conspiracy theory, but it still ended up in tragedy when Comet Ping Pong got shot up. Its big brother could cause more trouble.
Nevertheless, in the context of public opinion 15 million is just not a lot of people. In fact, it's barely anyone. This is important because QAnon gets quite a bit of attention from the press and it probably shouldn't. It's just another low-level conspiracy theory of the type that's nearly always simmering away among the bored and gullible in the US. It doesn't really deserve much of a spotlight.
Kevin, this is more akin to the number of starving, than to the percentage of the population. 15 million people not only believe this fantasy, they presumably are willing to act upon it - as the insurrection demonstrated. Do we even have 15 million soldiers in the armed forces? Maybe. But how many more than that? 15 million people who think our republic is no longer legitimate is a huge threat to that republic. I should take the time to google it, but I won't: how many people were in the Nazi party three years before the end of the Weimar Republic?
...how many people were in the Nazi party three years before the end of the Weimar Republic?
Well, 5 years before the end of the Weimar Republic, in 1928, the Nazi Party got just 2.6% of the vote in national elections. But that number grew:
Sept 1930: 18.3%
July 1932: 37.3%
Nov 1933: 33.1%
Winning 1/3 of the vote in the 11/33 elections was enough for Hitler to seize power and put an end to free elections in Germany.
Notably, Germany (and the world) fell into depression during those years. We have an opportunity to avoid that fate. But it's vitally important that America rebounds from the pandemic-induced economic slowdown. We need a robust recovery and a successful Biden administration. I have no patience for anyone worried we may be doing "too much."
And it's also worth noting that QAnon is not just a wacky belief held by a few conspiracy nuts. It borrows heavily from antisemitic thinking and the parallels to Nazis are on the mark. Josh Marshall at TPM had a good piece about QAnon last week:
But Q is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a fascistic political movement which predicts and advocates mass violence against liberals (and everyone else outside its definition of true Americans) in an imminent apocalyptic political reckoning. What we call the ‘conspiracy theories’ are simply the storylines and claims that justify that outcome. They could easily be replaced by others which serve the same purpose.
...But calling them conspiracy theories is not only wrong in concept it seriously misleads us about what they are and how to combat them. Qanon is a violent terroristic political movement with strong fascistic facets the upshot of which, in every storyline, is a final violent reckoning in which Trump’s political enemies are rounded up and murdered. That’s what it’s about. The fables are just getting people primed and ready for that moment.
The "Nov 1933" election should read "Nov 1932."
I read that piece too. And I wondered how far of a leap from a "Beer Hall Putsch" to a "Reichstag Fire" to whatever else that isn't good?
Isn't there a social science finding that says 4% of the population actively committed to change can make a big difference:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
"“There weren’t any campaigns that had failed after they had achieved 3.5% participation during a peak event,” says Chenoweth – a phenomenon she has called the “3.5% rule”. Besides the People Power movement, that included the Singing Revolution in Estonia in the late 1980s and the Rose Revolution in Georgia in the early 2003."
Manifesting right now, from Minsk to Yangon.
Still; what we need to know is how many people believe that Democrats are pedophiles regardless of their source. How many know how much about QAnon and how much they believe is irrelevant given that--as you yourself argue, Kevin--there are other conspiracy mongers out there.
The combined number of believers is what we need to know before being dismissive about the danger they pose.
74 million is a lot compared to 81 million when it is almost enough - within a few tens of thousands - to swing the Presidential election. The functional difference between Trump and Biden could easily be swayed by events, in particular economic events. In fact even the 74/81 balance could be reversed if there is a bad economic downturn, or even if there is not a good recovery before 2024. The number believing in QAnon is not really that important in itself - what is important is the much larger number believing Trump's own lies (he did not invent QAnon or directly support it), especially the lie that he won the election. That number is large and really scary for several reasons.
I would think 6% may not sound like a lot of people, except they are almost the sole occupants of a much larger percentage of states that each send two senators to Congress, and have the Electoral College biased in their favor.
Their effective number is more like 65 to 70%.
The Wikipedia article on QAnon says "An October 2020 Yahoo-YouGov poll found that even if they had not heard of QAnon, a majority of Republicans and Trump supporters believed top Democrats were engaged in sex-trafficking rings and more than half of Trump supporters believed he was working to dismantle the rings."
It doesn't mean too much for a person to have answered "somewhat accurate" on a poll. They said "i dunno … 'somewhat accurate,' i guess" and soon went back to eating their lunch, listening to tunes, or whatever.
If you put 155 million people in a room, and then split them with 74 million on one side, and 81 million on the other, and then asked everyone if they thought there was a lot of people on the other side of the room, nobody would say "no".
74 million people isn't *enough* people to win an election if 81 million other people vote the other way. But 74 million people is a lot of people no matter how you slice it and dice it.
"But if it represents only 6% of the country, with the other 94% believing that it's nonsense, then it's not a lot of people."
I dunno. I'd think we would want to start with how many people could say--unprompted--what % of the (adult?) population know what QANON is and what its beliefs are. I suspect that a relatively small % of the population does know. If, say, 50% of the population knows what they're being asked about, and 6% of the population agrees with QANON (which might mean 12% of the people who know what we're talking about), well, maybe we have a problem.
"Nevertheless, in the context of public opinion 15 million is just not a lot of people. In fact, it's barely anyone. This is important because QAnon gets quite a bit of attention from the press and it probably shouldn't. It's just another low-level conspiracy theory of the type that's nearly always simmering away among the bored and gullible in the US. It doesn't really deserve much of a spotlight."
Good grief, Kevin, what kind of drugs are you on now? That's the craziest rationalization you've ever written in all the years I've been your faithful follower. I can't believe I now have to rewrite the same response I just wrote a few hours ago under your previous post on this same topic.
That's 15 million adults, of which probably 10 million or more are between the ages of 21-50, which are the ages that are most inclined to act out their beliefs with activities such as armed militia exercises, violent counter-demonstrations against peaceful protesters, and aggressive intimidation of folks who don't share their stupid fantasies.
Voter suppression, not by legislation, but by armed intervention around polling places? Yeah, that's the new norm for that subset of fanatics. It doesn't take anywhere near 10 million armed aggressive fanatics to turn democracy upside down, does it?
Those fanatics aren't threatening to outvote me. I'm not at all worried about the voting power of those 15 million people. They're threatening to keep me from voting, and maybe to kill me and my family and burn down our home, just because I wrote a letter to my local newspaper supporting the certification of President Biden's election.
Is 15 million people a lot?
Fox News averaged 3.6 million prime-time viewers per day in 2020, and since I read somewhere that Fox News is destroying America, I'd say yes, 15 million people is a lot.
15 million: about the combined population of Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties. Wadaya think, Kevin? Is that a lot?
But they are much more that 6% of the Republican party. And much more that 6% of Facebook and Twitter. And many re-post and re-tweet QAnon while being totally unaware of the source.
Well, if 6% of the population can just be ignored, who else can we forget about?
There is a difference between saying that QAnon is loud, but does not command a large following (only 6% of the population), vs. saying 6% of the population does not amount to much.
In politics, ca. 50% of the people vote, half of those are Republicans and half of those are diehard Republicans, or ca. 12.5% of the population. So about half of the Republican base are QAnon followers or QAnon curious.
For your review: https://bityl.co/5ZmE
Excerpts:
"Half (50 percent) of Republicans, 28 percent of independents, and one in five (20 percent) Democrats say antifa was responsible for the attack on the Capitol."
"A majority (55 percent) of Republicans support the use of force as a way to arrest the decline of the traditional American way of life."
"Roughly four in 10 (39 percent) Republicans support Americans taking violent actions if elected leaders fail to act. "
The point is, there is widespread buy-in to QAnon-like conspiracies, because such conspiracies help alleviate the cognitive dissonance. By accepting that antifa was responsible for the attack, it allows Republicans to (a) ignore the reality that they, Republicans, were responsible for the violence, and (b) it gives Republicans the moral green light to commit violence against those who oppose them in the pursuit of what they think is a righteous fight to defend Democracy.
You are still missing the forest for the trees Kevin. If QAnon were a policy position like say expanding or not the social safety net, or increasing regulations on guns or pollution then you'd have a point. In that context what matters is the support for something relative to the alternative.
But this isn't that. This more comparable to for example to people supporting ISIS. As a proportion of all Muslims their numbers are tiny, and in absolute numbers I believe that at their highest peak, US intelligence estimates their numbers in the tens of thousands at most. However, because it is a toxic ideology which exists not to win an election, but to destroy its perceived enemies, what matters is the absolute numbers, since that is what limits how much damage they can do.
It's the same here. 15 million is a sea of people because in the context that it matters (how disruptive, damaging, and dangerous they can can be towards others lives), every single extra body supporting the ideology matters.
15 million people so alienated from the society they live in that they're willing to embrace terrorism to undermine it is a hell of a lot. In fact 15,000 would be a lot big enough to cause major concerns.
Kevin confuses 'what people believe' with 'what people's beliefs might impel them to do'. We've yet to have much data about the latter with respect to followers of Q.
“ in the context of public opinion 15 million is just not a lot of people. In fact, it's barely anyone. This is important because QAnon gets quite a bit of attention from the press and it probably shouldn't.”
That’s like saying we shouldn’t pay attention to a guy who shoots up a school or a post office or a mall because, after all, it’s just one guy. .... Many of these people (not all) mean to do this country as much harm as possible. They don’t believe in democracy. They believe the majority of Americans are not “real Americans” and shouldn’t have a say in the direction this country takes. And many of them don’t mind using violence when they don’t get their way.
... I’ll bet there are a lot of these people who regret that they didn’t go to d.c. to storm the capitol — despite the arrests, they consider the attempted coup a “success” — and might be willing to join in if another attack of some kind is attempted. That deserves some attention. In fact, the capitol attack did as well as it did because these people didn’t get enough attention before the attack. Why do we keep thinking, “Awww they won’t really do *that*. It’s just talk.”? And how often during the Trump years have we been wrong?
BeBop, Kevin’s comment system doesn’t have a way to up-check a comment, so please consider this reply a thumbs-up for yours. 👍